Darren Reed writes:
> Something eles I'd like to be able to do, which would take support
> from init(8), is to be able to do "shutdown now" from my xterm and
> have it go to single user mode with the console redirected to my
> xterm (or at least not kill the xterm & shell).

So, first of all you argue against the shutdown keyword as it's (to
paraphrase you) `useless creeping featurism', and then you want
something which is non trivial, reeks of `useless creeping featurism',
and and is really bound to be useful to a smaller subset of users
(i.e, `you').

E.g, in the majority of cases running '/etc/rc.d/network stop' at
shutdown time loses for people. However, some people have expressed
a desire to be able to stop and start the network manually.  Thus,
the network script could support `stop' for manual control, but have
`shutdown' as a no-op.

Also, there has been a request to shutdown xdm cleanly (which is one
reason rc.d exists) because of console graphics mode lossage. Thus, we
can't rely on SIGTERM here.

Having shutdown know that it must keep a single xterm and X-server
available, but nuke everything else, strikes me as being
extroadinarily and unnecessarily complex.